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TIME MAGAZINE, JUNE 4, 2001, VOL.157 NO.22
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THE WINNER |
Click here to see which site TIME picked as the best
Multimedia Feature
Our Interactive World, an hour-long special hosted by CNN's Michael Holmes and Tumi Makgabo, featuring luminaries from the world of information technology
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The Best of the Web
A guide to intelligent interaction, featuring 40 sites you've (probably) never heard of
IRONMINDS www.ironminds.com
SMARTY PANTS Crisp writing, a clean design, fresh thinking. A younger and edgier—some would say rawer—Salon. Its handsome, slick design trumps other content sites
THE ONION www.theonion.com
BITING HUMOR The news is almost never funny. The Onion, however, is. Always. Though hardly unknown, it's the best satire of current events money can buy. And because the site is free, you can laugh all the way to the bank
ARTS & LETTERS DAILY www.cybereditions.com/aldaily
NEWS YOU CAN USE Links to the most eclectic mix of essays, columns and articles on the Web. Sure, none of the stories is original, but are you going to trawl more than 40 newspaper, magazine and literary websites every day?
MOREOVER www.moreover.com
DEEP IMPACT Information on the Web is like an iceberg—most of it lies beneath the surface. Moreover's search engine does a sweet and swift job of ferreting out the top stories on the world's news, research and business sites
McSWEENEY'S www.mcsweeneys.net
STAGGERING GENIUS You'll find fiction, nonfiction, drawings of hairy people and a little poetry at this witty, literate site. It's a self-proclaimed must-read "for the junior Harper's set"
WORLD WIDE WORDS www.worldwidewords.org
LETTER MAN Edited by Michael Quinion, a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary, this quirky, surprising site explains the meaning of obscure words (like astrobleme) and traces the origin of phrases
KIDON MEDIA-LINK www.kidon.com/media-link
HOT OFF THE PRESS A Netherlands-based site with links to newspapers around the world. You can search by location and language. It's not pretty, but it's functional and thorough
UDDI www.uddi.org
ALL BIZ Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (now that's a mouthful!) is forging common protocols for identifying, describing and connecting companies wanting to do business on the Web. Dry as dust, but potentially important for the B2B market
MY STOCK OPTIONS www.mystockoptions.com
NOT OPTIONAL Back in 1999 you were a millionaire on paper. Use the handy calculators and expert advice (buy low, sell high!) to make sense of your post-bubble stock options
PAYPAL www.paypal.com
A QUICK BUCK Wire money without hassling with foreign-money senders. Currently available for six currencies
OANDA www.oanda.com/converter/classic
CASHING IN Forget about options; cash is king. Use this sturdy currency converter to see how the Turkish lira is doing against the Indonesian rupiah. A godsend for frequent travelers
HOW FAR IS IT www.indo.com/distance
ARE WE THERE YET? Calculate the distance between any two points on Earth and plot the locations on a map, courtesy of Xerox
ACTION ASIA www.actionasia.com
SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF Plan your next diving adventure in Thailand or trekking excursion through Nepal. The "where to go when" tool is especially helpful: match an activity with a location and date and the site tells you what the weather will be like
HOW STUFF WORKS www.howstuffworks.com
TRIVIA PURSUIT Everything from the serious—how jet engines work—to the silly—does drinking ice water burn calories? (The answer: sort of. But you should still go to the gym)
WEBMONKEY hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO Learn how to design and build websites. We know, this is so 1997. Deal with it. Your seven-year-old niece knows this stuff, so should you
INFOPLEASE www.infoplease.com
FAST FACTS An almanac, atlas, dictionary and encyclopedia rolled into one. Bookmark the weather fact of the day. Fantastic fodder for small talk
ZING www.zing.com
READY, AIM, UPLOAD Share photos with family and friends by posting them to free albums. Members can order and charge prints, cards and gifts. Now all you have to do is get grandma online
EPICURIOUS www.epicurious.com
CHEW ON THIS It's what's for dinner. Search for recipes from Gourmet and Bon AppEtit and review reports from around the globe. Won't fill you up but will definitely leave you satisfied
ASIA FOOD www.asiafood.org
TAKE-AWAY Recipes, discounts on Asian restaurants in New York City, video clips of conversations with chefs like Martin Yan (of Yan Can Cook fame), plus an extensive glossary of ingredients
INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE www.imdb.com
POPCORN NOT INCLUDED Full of film facts that are guaranteed to settle nearly any argument. Go to PayPal to collect those debts
RADIO LOCATOR www.radio-locator.com
TUNE IN A simple, no-frills site with an excellent database of links to more than 10,000 radio stations
BROKEN SAINTS www.brokensaints.com
FLASHY It's a hip, fashion-forward animE adventure-cum-online literary event. The artwork, music and plot hardly break new ground, but the (almost) cinematic quality of the whole package is pretty cool
SUPER BAD www.superbad.com
SO BAD IT'S GOOD Thousands of pages of design, abstract games and freaky graphics. Don't worry if it borders on being impenetrable: we can't figure it out, either. But it's a heck of a way to waste time
SIMIAN www.ikda.co.uk/simian
GO APE A high-bandwidth music and design extravaganza. It's a little out there—has Earth been overrun by monkeys?—but it proves the Internet can enhance listening to music
SOLEMATES www.centuryinshoes.com
STEP ON IT An elegant site chronicling the past century in shoes. Now we know what Imelda Marcos has been doing to keep busy
THE HUNGER SITE www.thehungersite.com
CLICK FOR A CAUSE One click and a corporate sponsor will donate a cup of food to someone in one of more than 74 impoverished countries. There are also links to other charities fighting everything from aids to breast cancer
FERTILE THOUGHTS fertilethoughts.net
FAMILY PLANNING Support groups, personal histories and schedules of networking events for anyone struggling with infertility or hoping to start a family through adoption or surrogacy
GREAT BOOKS ONLINE www.bartleby.com
VERSE, LINE AND SINKER Unlimited, and free, access to nearly all the classics. Kids, listen up: forget about pretending you lost your copy of King Lear. It's all here. You'll just have to search for it
BIBLE GATEWAY bible.gospelcom.net
GODSPEED Search passages and keywords from nearly a dozen versions of the Bible. Click on options to show footnotes or cross-reference other editions
FOLKLORE AND MYTHOLOGY www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html
TALL TALES Read the original story of Hamlet—it's weird!—and find a Japanese Cinderella from this exhaustive compendium of legends and myths
EARTHCAM www.earthcam.com
BIG BROTHER A Yahoo!-like directory of webcams. From newsrooms and bedrooms to the beaches and the slopes. There's even an ashtray cam for anyone needing a reason to stop smoking
OPERATIONAL SIGNIFICANT EVENT IMAGERY www.osei.noaa.gov
FROM THE TOP See floods, volcanic eruptions and other disasters from the eye of a satellite. Beautiful pictures of frighteningly catastrophic occurrences
SPACE IMAGING www.spaceimaging.com
SPIES ARE US Browse and buy satellite images from around the world. Find out if your neighbor is up to anything illegal in his backyard
SOCCER NICKNAMES home.wanadoo.nl/ejgvanloon
HAVE A BALL No bells, no whistles, just nicknames of more than a thousand soccer players from all over. It's a nice site for anyone who doesn't know what a penalty kick is but wants to sound like an expert in time for the 2002 World Cup
CYBERKIDS www.cyberkids.com
SHOW-AND-TELL Good, clean fun for kids 7 to 12. Educational, too. Aspiring Rembrandts can publish their art and poetry online
RUMPUS www.rumpus.com
ROMPER ROOM A high-energy, sugary site for kids with short attention spans. The site is bursting with educational cartoons and games. Bold colors, crazy sounds and wacky animations make for a captivating experience
HOT OR NOT www.hotornot.com
HEARTLESS FUN Rate people's beauty on a scale of 1 to 10. Cruel, but shockingly fun. If you're really daring, submit your photo and see how hot you're not. Tip: swimsuits improve scores tenfold
JONATHAN'S WEB SCRABBLE scrabble.boinkable.com
WORDSMITH A free site where up to five people can play long-distance (and long) games of Scrabble
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Most Self-Involved Site
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Most Addictive Site
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EMODE
www.emode.com
ME, MYSELF AND I A narcissist's delight—this site is all about you. Personality tests.
IQ tests. Determine the color of your aura or find out if you're millionaire material. It'll make you neurotic but, hey, it's fun
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HEROMACHINE
www.heromachine.com
BATTLE READY Design your own cartoon superheroes. Choose a basic body type, then dress, arm and color your creation. Incredibly juvenile and riveting for eight-year-olds and their parents
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More Technology Stories
The Best of the Web
A guide to intelligent interaction, featuring 40 sites you've (probably) never heard of 
Watch and Wear
What's smaller than a hat, heavier than a revolver and poses no danger to Armani? A computer that gives new meaning to gear head
Brain Power
In the brave new world of technology, we may soon be able to control distant objects just by thought
File It Under Sharing
Unlike Napster, the latest peer-to-peer innovations can access anything without giving foes a target to shut down or sue
High Fidelity
The latest digital enhancements in the audio lab are setting a new tone for sound
Speak Up
Your computer is listening
Hands On
You may be able to feel it but that doesn't mean it's real
Sniff-N-Scratch
Stop and smell the virtual gunpowder
Kenyan Company Creates Native Language Email Services
On a continent that speaks hundreds of different languages, working with email and other computer applications written mostly in English can be difficult
Talk Is Cheap and Coming to Gadgets Near You
Houses talk to computers. Magazines talk to wireless phones. Cars talk to the Internet
Around the World in 18 Days: Part 2
TIME's Aparisim Ghosh finds innovation in strange places
Around the World in 18 Days
How Wired is the Valley? TIME's Aparisim Ghosh reports from Silicon Valley
Vending the Rules
Japan's New Economy vending machines have got boxers, breakfast, beer--and a brand-new business model on tap
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Video: CNN circles the globe for how technology is changing our lives
Toolbox: software you may need for this site
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Stories from this week's issue
Ethics
Big Brother is watching the Net. Do you care?
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Talk to your thermostat, surf from the toilet, phone your fridge
Entertainment
Music mixing as easy as logging on to a website and typing on a keyboard
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Specials
CNN's hour-long special program on Our Interactive World, hosted by Michael Holmes and Tumi Makgabo, featuring luminaries from the world of information technology
Brian Bennett, reporter for TIME magazine, interviews MTV Asia's LiLi, a virtual veejay
Lili on her life and work: chat transcript from May 31, 2001
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